Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1887-03-10

stars. David Arson was an astronomer
of no mean skill, and he taught her all
he knew. 1t was study she loved, for
1t gave all scope for the marvellous, and
Marguerite Marine had natural love
for all that was strange and mystical.
She grew up without any training,
! without any constraint. But for the
rector she would have had no religious
teaching. She was by nature and in
stinct good and true; she had no vices
and few faults; she never told lie or
did mean action.
There was No constraint or control
over her actions. If she liked to go in
to install woods for day to feed the
birds and watch them, she did so; If she
wanted to spend the whole of bright
morning on the banks of the river, she
had not TO ask psrmission; she could do
as she would. The wonder was that
with all this freedom and liberty she
grew up so good, so refined and inno-
! cent as the flowers she loved.
/ Her life was made up OF dreams. She
talked little. If she asked Cyril Marine
IA question he would answer ii in such
an occupied, absent-minded fashion, it
was worse than If che had received no
answer; and Martha Grey was so given
to the supernatural that when Margu-
critic asked a question from her the
answer generally left her more ignorant.
Martha believed in luck and in fairies.
in omens and dreams, and everything
else most foolish and delightful. She
told the child such legends and stories
that she grew up almost uncertain
where the border lands Of truth and
fancy met.
Twice-while she grew from child,
hood to youth-the old nurse, Mrs. Spar,
came To see her. Each time she looked
with deepening wonder at the lines in
the pink hands. She had the good sense
not TO say anything to the child about
it; but she would go to Martha in the
kitchen, and warn her after the most
mysterious fashion to take great care
of her little mistress; and Martha, who
knew the old nurses reputation for be-
ing wise woman, almost a seer, was
much impressed with these warnings.
Il am quite sure myself" she would
say, ''the child will have an uncommon
lot, for she is not like other children"
To which the old nurse would reply,
sententiously:
perhaps it would be better II she
were."
lit was not natural life" tie old
woman said.
No child came to play with her. She
went to no parties-she knew no visit
ors-she lived with father who until
she was sixteen thought of her always
as a little child to be lulled to sleep by
the sweetest of melodies: ne never real
lied the fact that she had grown up.
That the magnificent contralto voice
had gained fullness. a roundness, and
richness that could never belong to the
voice of a child, never occurred to him.
She was always the little Marguerite
whom his dying wife had clasped in her
arms as che sung of Paradise.
"Who would not be at rest and free,
Where love is never cold?"
Marguerite had grown into one Of the
loveliest girls ever beheld-of an I'M
common type of beauty. She was tall
and shapely, slender, now with the low
liest years of girlhood, and giving a
promise of rare aud magnificent wom-
anhood. Her face was like flower,
sweet, grave, and proud. She had
wide, low brow, round with the fair
hair clustered as in the famous head of
Clytie, that ideal of feminine beauty.
Her brows were clear and delicately
arched, dreamy and beautiful, like the
royal brows of some young queen. Her
eyes were of the loveliest blue, dark bril-
liant blue, with long lashes lying like
fringe on the fair cheeks. She had the
fairest bloom blown by the summer
winds, dainty and brilliant-a skin sdch
as one seldom sees even in the fair faces
of Englishwomen, white as lily with
the lovely pink flush of rose; the most
beautiful mouth, with a uimpled chin
one of the fairest faces ever given TO
q daughter of Eve.
There was something in the face that
struck every one: in repose il was
dreamy and thoughtful, but when she
was animated and interested strange
lustre came from ii. On looking at il,
one felt that no common story wodld fit
it, that no common lot would befall the
owner of that exquisite face.
1t was full of noble imaginings, of
grand and noble possibilities, of poetry
and romance; but 20 Cyril Marine, the
man who lived in sweet sounds, it was
still the face of the little Marguerite.
Until the day she was sixteen there
had not been an event in her life, ex-
cept the one the could not remember
the death of her mother. 1t often hap
pened that the fairest and most cloud
less morn ushers in the most temptu-
Gus day-those sixteen years unmarked
by one event preceded life that was
full OF strange turns OF fortune and
strange events.